The Benefit of Living with a “No Mistakes” Mindset

One of our Core 4 principles at Improve is to “take everything as a gift”. In Tina Fey’s book Bossypants she says “there are no mistakes, only opportunities” inspired by this improv principle. When we improvise, we must take everything as a gift, because everything is telling us something about what is going on in the scene, and, since we are without a script, we want to pay attention to all of those gifts so that we can keep building this scene. Every word. Every facial expression. Every awkward silence. It all tells us something that we can then use to inspire our own response to move the scene forward. This “no mistakes mindset” is key for improvisers taking scriptless scenes and performing entertaining stories.

Scriptless scenes sound familiar? Of course! Every day of our lives is filled with scriptless scenes (unless, of course, you are a professional working actor, and if that’s the case, well, you can be the one exception to this :)

Just like improvisers we are navigating our days without a script, so, like improvisers, we can embrace the “no mistakes mindset” to pay attention to and take everything in our days as a gift of opportunity. This mindset can help us in our lives and at work.

Here’s a way to practice this no mistakes mindset and learn to turn anything into an opportunity:

Acknowledge

Acknowledge what has happened — what has been said, done, or thought. (This is the saying “yes” part of “saying yes, and”, another one of the Improve Core 4 principles)

Take action

Rather than beat yourself up about it (Because guess what? That doesn’t solve the problem), instead, take action. Apologize if you said something offensive. Fix the bug you discovered. Correct the typos. Clean up the spilled milk. Get up off the ground after slipping on a banana peel. I hope you’re getting the idea here! Taking action also involves telling anyone who needs to know about the situation. Sharing with others is more encouraged when the entire team is practicing the “no mistakes mindset”. (This is the “and” of saying “Yes, and”)

Learn from it

Consider what happened, ask yourself “What can I learn from this? What will I do going forward now that I know this/experienced this?” This is the final step of the magic of turning mistakes into gifts and opportunities and is key to making the mistake a learning opportunity. (This is the bonus “and” of “Yes, and”)

For example, if I send an email newsletter and then a recipient responds pointing out three typos and grammatical errors, I’ll acknowledge that I had some errors in the email. I’ll thank the person who told me about them and fix them in future emails. And thanks to this experience, now, going forward I will double-check and proofread future emails an additional time. GIFTS!

Here’s another example that can present a challenge with teams. Let’s say Jo says something to Alex and Alex felt offended by what was said. Alex tells Jo and Jo feels bad about it. Instead of beating himself up though, Jo can acknowledge that he said what he said, he can take action and apologize, and then he can learn from it by recognizing that what he said was offensive and be more sensitive to how others might receive what he said.

And finally, a third product-related example. Marketing intern Kylie recognizes that one of the pieces of the products about to be shipped out to customers are broken. She acknowledges that the pieces are broken and even though she is not responsible for the product she takes action and shares this information with the Product Manager about the broken products. By sharing with the PM Kylie is sharing a gift of information that can help the PM do his job better, and both get to learn from the experience, moving forward fixing the product and fixing the process so that these breaks are discovered earlier and not only by happenstance. Had Kylie not acknowledged the broken pieces and taken action, those products could have been sent to the customers only to be returned, leading to wasted costs and maybe even lost customers.

Taking everything as a gift is key to turning what might otherwise be labeled “mistakes” into learning and growing opportunities. When we take situations, comments, and interactions with colleagues as a gift, we can learn, grow, and maybe even laugh together!

If you’ve experienced turning a “mistake” into a gift, please share! What happened? How did you handle it?

Want to learn more about and practice this “No mistakes mindset” for yourself and/or with your team, contact us at Improve!

☺️
Mary